Web Server Colocation

What is meant by "web server colocation"?

Quite simply put, web server colocation means to "co-locate" a web server with one or more other web servers in a single physical web hosting facility. This web hosting facility is commonly referred to as a "data center", because it is a central hub through which "data" from various divergent servers flows in and out.

Web server colocation means that you either rent a physical machine that is to be housed at a particular web hosting facility. Or it could mean that you lease rack space at a web hosting facility where a machine that you own is being hosted for you.

In either of these two cases, you retain full control and rights over the server, but you will typically have a support agreement with the web hosting provider in which the provider will have a staff of operations personnel who will be responsible for:

• the physical security of your machine
• performing nightly backups of your machine
• managing the physical hardware of your machine (performing hardware upgrades or replacements as needed).
• assisting with system security in case you get locked out of your machine and are unable to log back in
• performing reboots of the machine, troubleshooting hardware, operating system, or network connectivity issues as they may arise.

Web server colocation can also mean that your web server is being shared on the same physical machine as other web servers. In this circumstance, you have limited access and limited control over your web server and can only manage it to the extent of your own personal web server instance or domain.

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All About Green Web Hosting

We all want to do our part to help the environment. Businesses of all kinds and sizes can play a really active role in reducing waste and energy consumption. How? Recycling, purchasing supplies made from recycled materials, telecommuting options, using alternative energy sources and, of course, choosing green web hosting services.

What are green web hosting services? There are a few varieties, but for this discussion we will focus on the groups that use eco-friendly sources for electrical power. Servers are delicate creatures and require everything from stable and cooled environments to massive amounts of electricity. This all adds up to a lot of energy consumption and the green web hosting services work to ensure that they reduce or totally eliminate their reliance on anything but renewable resources.

For example, if a provider is unable to supply their own electrical service through wind, solar, biogas or geothermal equipment they can opt to buy Renewable Energy Certificates. This means that the power they are using is supplied from a company that uses only natural and renewable methods of generating electricity for public consumption.

Of course there are those green web hosting companies that actually create all of their own electricity. These groups will also employ solar panels, wind turbines and other mass energy production techniques to keep their equipment performing at optimal, reliable and impact free levels.

In addition to having no impact on the planet, many of these web hosting companies also make carbon offsetting a possibility as well. This allows other companies who want to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions to purchase offsets and thereby underwrite emission reducing projects like the green web host's wind farm or solar equipment.

The green web hosting providers might also extend special discounts to non-profit agencies and organizations or to companies who offer telecommuting to their staff or employees. They also may provide totally free software; use offices powered entirely by renewable energies and may be completely paperless.

Do they cost more? That is something that requires a little thought to answer. While they may not save loads of money, and run at the same price as many other competitors, it is crucial to remember how a single paperless company can reduce energy and materials wasted by the hundreds of tons. Imagine the positive and beneficial global effects of hundreds of companies participating in the green initiative simply by signing up with a green web hosting service!

Compare Web Hosts is a premier web hosting directory that provides accurate and unbiased web hosting reviews. You can find the best cheap web hosting, Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting online at CompareWebHosts.com.

Online Cheap Web Hosting - Is it Really Cheaper?

The exceptional mushrooming of cheap online web hosting has only added to the competition and has forced many hosting service providers to slash their prices. Many such companies provides hosting at such a low price, that many people will register without second thought. Sometimes a hasty decision can turn out to be an expensive one for the sake of saving a few bucks.

Even though the claims made by a online cheap web hosting company can be genuine, you should take care of a few following points:

Many online cheap web hosting providers do not use quality software and hardware for networks and servers. As your business grows and traffic to your site increases, more reliable and good quality resources are very important. A "server down" message in the middle of a potential business deal of sale can drastically start to affect your business.

Explore the brochure or the website of your potential hosts to verify customer testimonials, user feedback to see if it can really fulfill the promises of unlimited disk space, tempting bandwidth and connection speed. It can truly become an expensive choice if you start losing out on sales and business because of constant "server down" issues, low download speed and improper service only to save a few bucks.

You can even go as far as asking for a demo of an existing site hosted with the same company. Compare then how this site compares with the requirements of your site.

You can also try to register your domain somewhere else even if your online cheap web hosting provider offers free registration. That would mean that your business is not only controlled by one company.

Click Here to see how to go about choosing the best hosting with the 3 Top current choices.

Using Web Hosting Reviews to Make a Sound Purchase

Are you thinking of starting your own website for the first time? Or are you thinking of changing your web host provider this year? In either event then it's time to seriously consider what features are worth paying for. Remember the goal in presenting a website to your audience in the first place. You want to boost online sales or promote your company. The best way to do this online is to provide simple, professionally designed assistance pages. You will be explaining your company's history, selling your products, and perhaps explaining some details about the industry you work in.

What are some of the best features to look for when you're looking for a web hosting company? First and foremost, you have to consider bandwidth and web space. Bandwidth refers to the total traffic accommodation you provide in of gigabytes, whereas web space refers to how much storage space you need for your content. Other considerations to consider include technical support (if the company offers free customer support by phone) as well as compatibility with top applications and programs like PHP, MySQL and others.

If you find that every web host provider in town seems to offer the same thing try to find web hosting reviews online. Reviews are written by users who have actually used the service and have experienced firsthand both positive and negative points of the service. How much stock can you put in user reviews? Isn't it true that reviews can be made up or that people's opinions aren't always reliable? Of course, and you should never order any service just because someone tells you it's a good idea. On the other hand, it never hurts to take note of what a reviewer is saying.

You could create a new chart or spreadsheet and record all the positives and negatives you read, and total up the amount of responses, ultimately determining which company appears to have the most satisfied customers. It is true that some customers may be picky and disgruntled, but even these reviews can be analyzed closely for practicality. For example, do you find that most negative reviewers complain about certain issues, but still concede that performance or uptime was reliable? Reliability is one of the most important issues when it comes to marketing a business online. Therefore, if you can learn about one particular aspect of web hosting from online reviews then it will be time well spent.

Compare Web Hosts is a premier web hosting directory that provides accurate and unbiased web hosting reviews. You can find the best cheap web hosting, Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting online at CompareWebHosts.com.

Do You Need a Dedicated Web Host?

Websites are getting more and more bandwidth-hungry, and webmasters increasingly tend to go for dedicated websites.

But do we really need dedicated servers? Even if you can afford the high monthly costs, there are clear disadvantages of dedicated hosting plans.

Not that cheap - First there is the high cost of leasing your own dedicated server. And that is not limited to what you actually pay monthly for your hosting. You will probably have to pay someone to manage and maintain your dedicated host if you go for an unmanaged web host.

Will you use up all the resources? Your average website never exceeds its allocated bandwidth. Going for a dedicated server will probably mean that you will never use most of the server resources you are paying for.

OF course there is the disk space. If you run an average website, you probably need just about a couple of megabytes of disk space for all your html files, your images etc. What will you use the huge disk space available on dedicated hosts for? Even if you absolutely need lots of disk space, a share web host plan is still a good option. If you reach your allocated disk space, you can always upgrade.

The technical skills to run dedicated hosts Another aspect you need to bear in mind is the issue of the skills required to set up, run and maintain a dedicated server. How do you manage downtimes? Unless you have advanced skills in running web servers, you will inevitably make mistakes and crash everything. But this is not all, once the server has crashed, you will need to reboot it. That is if you know how to reboot a web server.

And finally... In conclusion, and truth be said, most medium-sized websites would run perfectly well in a shared environment. Most absolutely don't need a dedicated host to perform optimally. Shared hosting is simple, cost-efficient and allows you to focus on building your website and leave to well-trained professionals the worry of running your server.

Let's leave dedicated hosts big companies who have ready expertise to set them up and run them.

Check out my blog for additional web hosting resources.

The Web Hosting Bubble

Web hosting is a new industry. Due to the invention of the internet, and subsequently domain names, thousands of businesses have sprung up to provide services to support what we now know as the internet.

The web hosting industry has been very profitable for those who succeed, yet also subject to fierce competition and a highly partisan consumer base. In this industry, reputation and word-of-mouth truly exceed the gains of the more expensive, traditional methods of advertising.

Often, all it takes is one upset customer to a create a "this web host sucks" website, that can scare away thousands of potential customers. Other times, a bad experience with customer service can lead to the irate customer creating a "thread" in a popular online forum to complain of the service. While one such occurrence may not be a game-breaker, if the trend is allowed to occur it can cause the downfall of a web hosting company. Yet, in such an industry, a few giants have emerged to grab large profits and succeed quite well.

Most of the medium to large sized web hosting companies report a staggering growth rate as well, due in part to the boom of the internet in various parts of the world, and the international nature of the internet. So while US demand may slide, the gain in demand in other countries, can easily exceed what is lost from the American consumer base.

There could be what some are calling a "plateau" within American web hosting. Once some of the premier web hosting companies establish solid reputations, with consistently excellent customer service, most customers tend to stay with the same web host.

So in the future, to avoid losing their currently rapid rate of growth, the larger web hosts will have to begin offerings in some of the larger foreign markets to stay competitive. Some companies have already done this. For example, Hostgator launched "Hostgator Brazil" with a new .com.br domain in August 2007, as they noticed a large growth in customers from South America, particularly Brazil, to help cater to that target demographic. Hostgator has seen an explosion of international customers in the past year, as they now comprise over a third of the american company's customers. Hostgator plans to market more aggressively in Brazil in the future, and is dedicating more resources to the South American region. Expect other web hosting companies to follow suit, to expand into foreign regions. If other web hosting companies don't make the move into foreign markets, they may lose their competitive edge on some of their more savvy counterparts.

So, in conclusion, while the American consumer demand may reach a "plateau" once they find a comfortable web hosting service, expect the thriving web hosts to have moved into foreign markets.

Jonathan Baldwin runs a Web Hosting Reviews website, where you can find this article, The Web Hosting Bubble, and reviews of Cheap Web Hosting.

Why Multiple Domain Hosting is Recommended?

In the web hosting industry today, getting a website is very easy because the prices of domain names are getting cheaper. Once you choose a particular web provider, they will provide you almost everything making you ready to launch your website in a short time. However, there are companies out there that only allow you to register a single domain. For those who only want to create one website, this won't affect them but for those who aim to have more than one, that company will not be their choice. If you want to have another website, you will have to get multiple hosting accounts and this will definitely cost a lot.

However, in the industry today, solutions to that problem have arisen. Companies now provide you the power to manage everything under one account. With the ability to have multiple domains, you can decide what site you want to create. In other word, you can have one website for your blog, one for your online shop and so on. The best thing is you can relate those sites with your chosen domain names.

With your multiple domain accounts, you also get email addresses, FTP accounts, database, sub-directories attach to each domain. Most companies will provide this and even provide you with control panel application that enables you to set up your domain with ease. All you have to do is access the add-on and fill out the application like filling out a form. With providers like GoDaddy, you are able to purchase multiple domain accounts at an affordable price and then register it with your web host.

How much do you have to pay for it? In today's web hosting market, you can easily get one for less that $10 per month. The question actually lies in what sort of business you are doing and the scale of your business. With that price, you can get enough features to support you in creating your ideal website. However, you must still find a hosting company (personally I recommend Bluehost) that provides reliability in its service.

In conclusion, having multiple domain names is a very good way to expand you business. It also increases your chances to make profit in your business with more exposure that you get by having more than one website. You get to save money and increase your profit at the same time. That is killing two birds with one stone.

Do you need guides in chosing the right web hosting? Check out WebHostingSecretRevealed.com - a place where the webmaster (Jerry) examine various hosting services by hosting websites on the web hosts first hand.

Article written by Justin Knights, freelance writer.